"You know, a one-way conversation with you isn't nearly as interesting as the ones when you get involved Ezra. We're all getting a bit bored by it." Buck didn't have to work too hard to sound frustrated. The past few days had introduced him to levels of aggravation he hadn't experienced in years. Frankly, he would have been happy to go his entire life without feeling this exasperated and discouraged again.
The frantic activities that followed Barrington's phone call had proven to be little more than a phenomenal waste of time and energy. Every trail they could find came to a dead end. To characterize the man as a ghost was understating the problem. It had taken a toll, physically, mentally and emotionally on the whole team. There wasn't another agent in the building brave or stupid enough to go anywhere their offices, and Travis had finally banished them from the office in no small part due to the growing repair costs for damaged furniture and walls.
"I won't lie to you Ez. Things aren't going all that well. JD is about as down as I've every seen a body get. Not bad enough he's been hurting over what happened to you but now he feels like he let Chris down as well. He's been working his ass off trying to track that Barrington bastard but it's like the SOB left the planet or something. And you know if JD can't find him, well then, he just can't be found. None of us have been able to talk him out of his mood.
Not that Chris's mood is much better. I've seen rabid dogs that have a better temper than he's had since he heard Barrington's voice. He's busted two phones in as many days. Put a decent size hole in the wall when he threw the second one."
Buck sighed deeply. "Shit Ezra, I probably shouldn't be telling you all this. Nathan says we need to be talking to you now, since the doctors stopped trying to kick us out of here. Thing is, we're supposed to be encouraging you to wake up and so on. Can't imagine you need me to tell you how much we all want you back. That seems kinda obvious. Besides, you know how sulky the guys get when any one of us is stuck in here. Visiting hospitals is not on our list of preferred pastimes. Although, I do admit the nurses around here are something to look at. Gonna have to work at getting a few phone numbers from them. Not that I really have to work that hard!" He wondered why he even bothered to put on the act.
His eyes moved to the monitors. Despite Nathan's best efforts to explain what each piece of equipment was doing all that he could see was some kind of Frankenstein's lab of mechanical chaos. It looked terrifying, and that sense of dread only got worse each time the realization hit that they were the only things keeping Ezra with them. Buck's mind wandered to the question he had been fighting back – how long would it be before talk turned to switching all of this off? "Don't worry about it Ezra. We're gonna be a human wall between you and anybody stupid enough to try something like that."
The silence was killing him. "We are going to find the bastard Ezra. I promise you that. May not be tomorrow, or next week, but sooner or later we are going to find him. Everybody is working on it. Even Travis is calling in favours with Interpol and Scotland Yard and God knows who else. That man has a scary number of connections. I get the feeling he has more in his background that any of us know about. We're gonna find him and he's not gonna be able to hurt you again Ezra."
"That doesn't exactly sound like the kind of talk Nathan had in mind." Vin's voice was soft, but still served to startle his friend.
"You think it matters what we say?"
"If it didn't you wouldn't be trying to boost him up, would you?" Vin pulled a chair closer. "We all want a shot at Barrington, but it might not happen. At least, not yet. Every trail has gone cold, and it doesn't seem to matter much where we look."
Buck fought back the desire to start shouting. "Travis telling us to back off?"
"No. In fact, he seems to be working as hard as we are on this. I'd love to know how a judge has some of the contacts he does. Truth is, without a lead, we're spinning our wheels. Right now, there are more important things to focus on."
"What's more important than finding the SOB who got Ezra shot?"
"Making sure Ezra gets better." Buck turned at the sound of JD's answer and found the rest of the team standing just inside the door. "Believe me Buck, I – we – want this guy too. But that guy in the bed is a hell of a lot more important."
There was simply no way to argue that point, so Buck wisely chose to shut up and started to sit down again, only to be stopped by an order from Chris.
"Nope – you go home. We don't all need to be here, and you look as tired as I've ever seen you."
"I'm no worse off than any of the rest of you."
Josiah chuckled. "Not exactly an encouraging description of your situation."
"Look, we all need some down time." Chris offered a softened version of his glare when Vin chuckled at the comment. "Yes, I know I'm the worst offender. But Ezra is going to be pissed off, for good reason, when he wakes up to find all of us passed out on his floor."
"Not leaving him on his own." JD challenged despite his own evident exhaustion.
"I'll stay." Vin's voice was quiet but assertive.
"You've been here as much as any of us. More actually." Nathan had not been the only one to notice Vin's need to be near Ezra since this started but was the first to comment on it. They all wanted to stay close, but Vin had somehow managed to be the one there most often.
Vin was silent for a moment watching Ezra's chest slowly rise and fall under the control of the respirator. "You were there. You were with him. Watching this from above, from too far away from it all, I just felt like I wasn't there for him."
"You can't really think he didn't know you were with him, as much as any of us could be? He knew Vin. He knows now." Josiah's words didn't change anything.
"I know it makes no sense, but it was how I felt sitting up there."
Chris didn't try to reason with him. He knew they all felt that same sense of failure, being so close to Ezra and unable to stop him from slowly bleeding, God forbid, to death. It hadn't occurred to him that it would have been that much harder to watch it from a distance.
"Just remember what you've been telling me. Wiping yourself out won't help him. OK, everybody else outta here for the night. I'll bring you some breakfast Vin." He rested a hand on his friend's shoulder as the younger man pulled his chair closer to the bed and prepared to settle for the night. "Don't be too hard on yourself. We all did what we could. He knows that."
"I know. Doesn't make it any easier though."
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There was a voice somewhere deep in the back of his mind telling him he needed to get up and get moving. He couldn't figure out who it was, but he knew he should probably be listening to it, although he had no clue why. The words were muffled, sounding like they were trying to filter their way through layers of cotton. The longer he dwelled on that thought, the more he realized his entire body felt like that. His mouth was so dry his tongue stuck to the roof of it. Sluggish was far to weak a word to describe how every muscle in his body felt, and the mere act of thinking about opening his eyes seemed to exhaust him. Maybe just a few more minutes of sleep would clear things up.
He didn't know how much time had passed before the muffled sounds began again. Maybe they'd been going on the whole time. He simply couldn't sort any of that out. This wouldn't do. That same annoying voice was at him again. He needed to wake up, before it was too late. Too late? Too late for what? It couldn't be work. Being late for work was an engrained aspect of his very being. It would be too much of a shock to others if he appeared on time. Unless… was he on job? No, that couldn't be it. He wouldn't be feeling like this if he was working. The adrenaline of undercover work kept him sufficiently stimulated that he woke up in character, or at a minimum, aware of his character. Right now, he was just plain Ezra Standish. He smiled to himself. Nothing plain about Ezra Standish, and he knew the rest of the team would have been quick to make the same observation.
The team. That was who he was hearing through the fog. Yes. He was almost willing to bet those were the voices in his head, trying to get through to him. Now, why were they doing that? Foolish question. They were trying to communicate with him. The better question would have been, what precisely were they trying to say? It had to be more than get up. If that was all, one of them, likely Buck with JD by his side, would have dumped him out of bed, or something else into the bed to encourage his hasty departure from the comfort of the covers. Chris would have been yelling, not coaxing and more importantly, none of them would be in his room doing any of that.
First deduction – he was not in his room. He fought to try to focus on his surroundings. What could he see or hear to provide the necessary clues to work this out? That was his first realization that he couldn't see anything. It didn't feel like he was blindfolded, and a surge of panic raced through him. If not blindfolded, then blind! He fought back with his once again ebbing energy. He wasn't blind. He couldn't be. Stop jumping to the worst conclusion Standish and think this through. He calmed enough to allow another option into the mix, and if he'd had the energy, he would have slapped himself. His eyes were closed. The simplest solution was usually the correct one, although not always the most interesting. Open your eyes Ezra. Well that should have worked. Why couldn't he do something that basic?
Once again, it was a simple, obvious answer. He'd been hurt. That awareness opened him up to a wide range of aches and pains that had previously been overlooked his desire to determine his situation. His throat was raw, and his chest was burning. Every breath seemed to create an ache deep inside him. Now that he was cognisant of the pain, it seemed to increase at a rather alarming rate. The only positive he could draw from any of this was that this much suffering had to mean he wasn't dead. Because as bad as it was, Hell would be worse. On the other hand, eternity spent hooked up to who knew what in a hospital bed was pretty damned close to his very definition of Hell and may well be the fate to which he was destined.
He quelled the growing anxiety, determined to figure out exactly where he stood, or more accurately laid, in this matter. The meant recalling how he got here – this time. Visions of past hospital stays flooded his memory. He dismissed the childhood incidents, pushing them back behind the locked door in his mind for some future nightmares. Likewise, his time with the FBI was set aside. That was history, even if it wasn't as forgotten as he would have preferred. This was current, and undoubtedly involved a case he and the team were involved in. The faces and profiles of gun dealers, smugglers, and other assorted vermin flashed in his mind, but none screamed out at his as having any relevance and the tried to move away from that avenue. His last hospital stay hadn't been due to any case but was at the hands of a mercenary who had elected to make him the pawn in a game. Humiliating, and frighteningly close to fatal. But that was too long past to be the cause for his latest enforced bedrest.
Damn, why couldn't he remember? Why couldn't he open his eyes and look around? Who was with him? He knew someone had to be. They wouldn't leave him alone. It simply wasn't in their nature. They would be close by, watching him, encouraging him to come back, as he would be doing if the situation was reversed, not that his gift for getting into trouble often allowed that to be the case. Chris was always berating him for that – for being the one to find trouble with such ease. And now, in a ridiculously predictable manner, Ezra had reinforced that belief. It wasn't his fault he was in the bank when this happened.
His body didn't have the strength to react with the same gasp of recognition that his brain did. The bank. The robbery. He'd been shot. Dear God, had anyone else been hurt? He'd tried to send a message but clearly it had been a futile effort. He feared things must have gone badly, since he couldn't imagine any other outcome. And he'd been left to die in the street. Not the noble ending he'd hoped for himself. Bleeding out in a gutter lacked dignity. Mother would be mortified when she got the news.
Now that the story was in place, he was wishing it had remained hidden. He would have been far happier not remembering another disastrous episode in his life. He had let down the people in the bank, his family and his team. He only wished that reality had been more of a surprise to him, as he let the feeling of failure overtake him as he drifted off again to peaceful oblivion.
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tbc